


it's not gonna kill you

by bitternanami, ymirjotunn



Category: Dangan Ronpa 3: The End of 希望ヶ峰学園 | The End of Kibougamine Gakuen | End of Hope's Peak High School, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 06:53:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14785604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitternanami/pseuds/bitternanami, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ymirjotunn/pseuds/ymirjotunn
Summary: nanami and komaeda have a civil conversation.





	it's not gonna kill you

**Author's Note:**

> the title of this gdoc is "nanami and komaeda Smack Down"

Nothing on the island is really an independent affair. Being alone is neither comfortable nor safe, for multiple reasons, so virtually all facets of life are shared, to some degree.

Officially, everyone has a roommate, but there’s plenty of unofficial sleeping spaces to set up in if someone feels like variety. More often than not, Sonia and Gundam can be found curled up in a pile of scrounged-up blankets and pillows in the corner of the hotel lobby.

Still, that doesn’t mean everyone is together, all the time. There’s a lot of them on the island, and they all have different needs and limits to navigate, not to mention that some people tend to...grate against each other. (Few people, for example, can stand being around Komaeda for longer than a few hours.)

So, a communal dinner is not the norm. Generally people will stop by the restaurant in pairs or larger groups, at whatever time is most comfortable and convenient, and if there’s another group there, they don’t _have_ to join up. There’s a running joke that it’s what meals at university would have been like.

Tonight’s one of those rare nights where spending time together at dinner was scheduled in advance, for Akane’s birthday. It’s comfortable, the room filled with chatter and the smell of the meal, and Akane is so excited she’s nearly bouncing in her chair.

And then Komaeda breaks the relative silence of eating, with a bright smile: “An excellent meal! Far better than any of us deserve.”

The room falls silent, except for Akane, who has continued to eat with ferocity. She’s the only one who isn’t looking. Komaeda, though, seems content with what they’ve done, picking up their chopsticks to continue eating despite the stares.

“You’re wrong,” Nanami says quietly.

Komaeda’s chopsticks clatter to their plate. That in itself isn’t wholly unusual - shaking and tremors are a part of their illness, after all - but they’re staring intently at Nanami, eyes dark, and it’s like the whole atmosphere of the room has shifted, a whirling discomfort that’s centered squarely on Komaeda.

“I’m sorry?” they say, pleasantly, not bothering to pick up their chopsticks, to acknowledge that anything has happened. “Did you say something, Nanami-san?”

Nanami doesn’t seem fazed by the energy in the room, even as Hinata seems to be a stray word away from standing to escort someone outside. She meets Komaeda’s gaze head-on, calmly, steadily, and says nothing.

Souda looks so uncomfortable it looks like he’s about to get up and leave the room entirely, and Nidai looks _furious_ that Akane’s dinner has been disrupted, even if she still appears oblivious - but Sonia speaks, with a peacefulness that no one actually feels: “The gyoza is especially good this evening, Hanamura-san. Did you do something differently?”

That breaks the spell. Hanamura starts to infodump about freshly grown produce, and Nanami simply looks back to her food. Komaeda is clearly still agitated, but their emotion has quieted to an inconspicuous simmer, and at least they don’t seem to have ruined Akane’s night. She’s still happily tearing away at a hunk of pork, undisturbed, and Nidai is settling down just watching her.

* * *

Nanami answers the knock at her door and stares up at Komaeda, towering, leaning precarious on their cane, smiling-but-not-smiling down at her.

“Hello, Komaeda-kun,” she says, and steps aside, gesturing for them to sit down on her bed. “It’s nice to see you this evening.”

“Oh, please.” They stare down at her with an expression of faint disgust, unmoving. “Explain yourself.”

She blinks up at them. “Um?”

They scowl for a moment, and then breeze past her, standing just at the edge of the bed, still choosing not to sit. Not facing her, they say, “You disagreed with me at dinner. I’d like to hear your argument.”

“Oh, it’s not really an argument,” Nanami says, closing the door behind her. “It’s just not really accurate to say that we don’t deserve good things.”

“You’re right,” Komaeda says, turning just slightly. “That isn’t really an argument.”

She smiles at him, careful to be gentle, not wishing to dismiss their anger. “Komaeda-san, could I ask you a question?”

Perhaps this conversation has been a long time coming. She’s thought about it, at length, and she wonders if Komaeda has as well - almost certainly. It won’t be especially easy, but it should be good, for both of them, to process this, to have a proper conversation working through all of it.

“Mm?” They’re still not facing her. Strange, because they usually like to face their conversational partner, to examine their expression and body language.

“If nobody gets to be redeemed, then why was it that you tried so hard to save me?”

At this Komaeda spins around, near-violently, knees clicking at the force of their movement. Their face is barely-constrained wildness, eyes wide, knuckles white on their cane. “You were innocent.”

Nanami scowls, crosses her arms, meets their eyes directly. “No, I’m not.”

Komaeda’s eyes go even wider, incredulous, and she keeps pushing on: “Even if we suppose that you _are_ the sole judge of innocence or guilt, it’s still inaccurate to say I’m innocent.”

“I’m just--”

It’s not their turn to speak. She’s not done. “I was supposed to protect you all, Komaeda-kun. That was the whole reason I was there. The reason I existed, the reason I was created in the _first place_ , and I _failed_ you.” Her voice is still steady, despite the uncomfortable choking feeling rising in her chest - a marvel, that she can feel it even as she is, some kind of engineering or programming miracle - 

And Komaeda laughs, bitter, nearly mocking. “So what? You failed a bunch of hopeless criminals who didn’t deserve your help in the first place. We--” They pause, exhaling abruptly, and speak slowly, as if to a child: “ _We_ failed the whole _world_ , Nanami-san. How is the scope of your crimes in any way comparable?”

To hear that, it feels like something cold is filling her, freezing, crackling, and she tenses with the feeling, hands curling into fists. She doesn’t like it. “Komaeda-kun.”

They meet her eyes, furious, mirroring her tenseness. “What?”

In turn, she mirrors Komaeda’s earlier slow speech, careful, deliberate, direct. “I don’t like that.”

Komaeda’s eyes flare, and they square their shoulders. “Like it or not, it’s the truth. It’s the way things are, so you have to a--” 

“You all,” she says, interrupting them, ignoring how clearly they’ve misunderstood because she has to just say what she’s thinking before she loses the thread of it, “you’re my friends. My _family_.” Komaeda has stopped dead, not speaking over her, face illegible, so she continues. “Does it occur to you, Komaeda-kun, that you guys were-- were and are my entire world?” Her voice slips, here and there, and she can feel how her face is drawn, urgent, hurt, desperate.

Komaeda’s face doesn’t change, but they don’t speak for a moment. Nanami’s almost not sure they’ve heard her when they speak again, suddenly. “And yet even the results of your supposed failure aren’t like ours. The world is dead. We aren’t.”

They lurch, unexpected, towards her, leaning heavier on their cane, closer, not threatening but very nearly, eyes wide with intensity. “How is that anything _close_ to what we deserve? You say we all deserve to be forgiven, but what consequences have come of _your_ failures? Our lives? Our _worthless lives_?”

Nanami’s eyes widen, a little, and she looks at Komaeda, again, at the way their arms are shaking, pushing their cane into the floor with force, face furious and manic and hateful. They’re angry, she sees, and upset, and she… thinks she understands.

She looks at their eyes, tries to keep the contact gentle, and says, “I think I understand where we’re getting stuck, Komaeda-kun.”

Komaeda’s eyes refocus on her face. They lick their lips, slowly, maybe pointedly, and say, hissing it out in a breath, “And _where would that be_.”

“I’m not talking about forgiveness at all.” She smiles, soft. “I don’t really know where you got that?”

They’re startled, eyes wide not with fury but with surprise. “Wh--”

“The thing is that, it’s not about what you or I deserve,” she says. “It’s about how things are, and.” She focuses, tries to find the right words, the right structure. “And how things are is, we’re here. I want to make the most of it.”

It’s like Komaeda as an entity has paused, frozen in time to parse, but it doesn’t take long before they recover, blinking, fingers tightening again around the handle of their cane. “How can it _not_ be about what you or I deserve? It’s our responsibility to atone for what we’ve done.”

She tilts her head. “And you want to atone by...being dead?” They stare at her, expression dark, almost unreadable, and she reassesses, finds the words that will be meaningful to them. “By leaving it to everyone else to fix things?” That one’s right. They don’t flinch, but she sees the words connect, in their eyes, in the muscles of their jaw. “Maybe I’m wrong, but. That doesn’t sound a lot like responsibility to me, Komaeda-kun.”

They’re quiet for a moment, and then they say, maybe with a little less anger in their voice: “It’s not about discarding the responsibility. It’s about accepting the fact that we are more likely to do harm than good. If we can’t justify our continued existence, then we have no right being here. No right to _make the most_ of anything.”

They are mocking her. Or, not mocking her, but mocking her words. That is close to the same thing, she thinks, but maybe it isn’t that Komaeda finds her absurd or lacking. She’s actually almost certain they don’t. Otherwise they would be much angrier, much more forceful, not trying to form a rational argument with her, not deeming her worthy of the time or effort of making sense. She has seen that happen before, when people don’t take them seriously. She wants to take Komaeda seriously, though. She always has.

So she is not hurt, by their tone, by the way they grit it out between their teeth, like the phrase is painful or offensive. She smiles, instead, and returns to something in their words that will connect with them: “It seems funny to me, Komaeda-kun, that you would tell me about the _likelihood_ of something happening, don’t you think?”

Komaeda laughs, once, brief, blunt, sharp. It is very nearly like a wheeze, or a cough. “I consider myself qualified.”

“I believe that you are,” Nanami says. “I’m only suggesting that perhaps you’re wrong about this particular instance.” She looks to the ceiling, thinking about the right phrasing. “Likelihood is relative, isn’t it? To you… to you more than anyone, I think.”

Komaeda looks at her, and though it’s a direct gaze it still feels somehow sideways. They sit, sudden, on the edge of her bed, resting their hands atop the handle of their cane, now, instead of clenching it. “What are you getting at.”

“Hmm.” She thinks, a moment, and then points at the space next to them on the bed. “May I?”

They shrug, and - in a gesture she thinks is mostly for demonstration - scoots a fraction of an inch to the side. So she sits down next to them, not too close, very careful not to be too close. This is a show of trust, of interest. She wants to respect it, and return it in kind.

“You say,” she says, at last, “that you have to accept a likelihood of doing more harm than good. But I think, if we are talking about probability, that, hm.” She looks at her leg, considers. “That first, in terms of probability, you’re actually more likely to have a good or neutral impact on the world at this point. Because we’re on this island, and we don’t really leave it, and we probably won’t, and we’re all working on getting better. So… when we do have contact outside of here, like, mm, with the Future Foundation, and so on, we’re usually helping them, right? And we’re doing good here, I think. We’re helping each other to do good.”

Komaeda is silent. Nanami wonders if they are bitter, at all. If they think about the way some of the others treat them here and get frustrated. She would understand that. Sometimes she is, on their behalf, about it, and for that matter, sometimes she gets frustrated about how they treat her, too. They all treat her as though she might break or disappear at any moment. Holding her at arm’s length. Too delicate, too precious. She wants to explain that she is only herself but she doesn’t know how.

“And, second,” she says, regaining her train of thought, “is that, I think, in terms of probability, you should know better than most people, that probability isn’t always right, and sometimes the improbable is more likely than anything.”

“Mm,” Komaeda says, but their voice is a little cold, not connected anymore.

“What I’m saying is,” Nanami says, hurriedly, “is, that I know you feel a responsibility, and I understand that, I think. And I think that’s okay? But, you can fulfill that responsibility without… punishing yourself.”

She realizes, after it comes out, what she’s done wrong, in Komaeda’s eyes, because they’re shaking a little bit, again, maybe with some kind of laughter. “Wait… no. Let me think. Komaeda-kun, you believe that your responsibility is to punish yourself, right? That you’re… doing justice.”

“Yes, Nanami-san,” Komaeda says, almost exasperated. “That’s what taking responsibility for my actions means.”

“What if…” She thinks. “What if, doing justice for your actions meant, accepting, or maybe, attempting to see the potential accuracy of… the idea that you are a person, and people do good and bad things, and that… regardless of what you have done, the past is the past, and people can only change the future, and in that future we can live better than we did before. I mean, oh, well, sorry! That was a lot, huh.” She smiles, down at her legs.

“I kept up with you,” Komaeda says, dryly, somehow. “You’re saying that justice is mercy.”

“No,” she says, looking up to them, serious-faced again. “I’m saying that justice _can_ be mercy. Or, maybe even not mercy, but reflection, and sympathy, and the desire to create a better future.”

“I’ve already explained that we don’t deserve sympathy,” Komaeda says.

Nanami shakes her head, fiercely. “No! No. It’s not _about_ deserving, Komaeda-kun! It’s about _allowing_. It’s about giving it to yourself anyways.”

Komaeda laughs at this. “That’s… impressively naive, Nanami-san.”

Something inside Nanami whirs, furiously, and she stands, whirling around to stand in front of Komaeda, glaring up at them, jaw clenched in anger. “Komaeda-kun, I understand that seeing other points of view is a very difficult process for you, but do you think that for maybe just once you could _try_ to consider that other people can know things, too?”

Their laugh stops short at her outburst, their face twisting from a smile into stone. “Like what.”

Nanami considers her next words carefully. The line of logic is clear to her: these people, everyone on this island, is her friend, and she would not be friends with them if they were bad people, whether or not that quality was inherent to their being. It’s true that they’ve hurt people, but now that they’re no _longer_ hurting people, their responsibility is to themselves, to forgive and learn to grow again. That isn’t something that should be denied to anybody, and it certainly won’t be denied to people who are her friends.

She knows these things, each one as fundamental a truth as her own existence (more fundamental a truth than it ever was, these days). But… it’s a truth that won’t ring true to Komaeda. It would only drive them further away.

So she twists her hands together, squares her shoulders, gathers her thoughts. “I think… To deserve or to not deserve things isn’t relevant. And it’s not useful, either.”

They’re watching her, eyes cold but focused. Still listening.

“You want to take responsibility for your mistakes,” she says, meeting their eyes in turn. “I know that. So, then...we should be talking about the tools a person objectively needs to do that, right?” 

That’s it. Keep it tied to their goals, and the logic will follow. They’re still watching, still listening. “You need room to breathe,” she says. “In order to improve yourself, by offering yourself sympathy, you need to be able to give yourself space or you’ll stagnate and that won’t help anyone.”

Komaeda tilts their head, smiles a sick smile, and says, half a reply and half a retort, “What right do I have to seek improvement? Why _shouldn’t_ I stagnate?”

“You already tried that, didn’t you?” she says, tilting her head back, mirroring the motion of an inquiry. “Back when...when you were listening to her.”

Komaeda jerks at that, as though they’re biting back the urge to stand up and leave. “I _never_ listened to her.”

Nanami blinks. She feels surprise, that Komaeda’s experience does not match the experiences that the rest of her friends have communicated to her, but she does not display it. That would be bad, she thinks, might offend. And this is the first time Komaeda has so much as mentioned their time with Enoshima. She doesn’t want to ruin the chance they might feel comfortable talking about it again.

“Okay,” she says instead. “Sorry, that’s my mistake.” They’re still tense, but they don’t flinch, don’t prepare to leave, so she feels like she has done the right thing. “I guess I just mean...you’re all coming from a place of pushing yourself to feel as bad as you possibly can. Right?”

Their gaze drops. They say nothing, but there is no protest this time.

“To me, that sounds like exactly the opposite of moving forward,” she says. “If you want to move past despair, Komaeda-kun, shouldn’t you be looking towards its opposite?” 

Komaeda seems to be amenable to this, so she presses on: “Isn’t that what hope is, moving forward?”

They laugh this time, neither smiling nor derisive, but their shoulders relax just a bit. “If you’re content to regard it so simply.”

She relaxes, too, realizes belatedly that her own shoulders had been tensed and she hadn’t even noticed. “I don’t doubt that there’s more to it. But maybe my line of thinking will still make sense, even with the distance between our definitions?”

Komaeda gestures with one hand, eyebrows raised, an invitation to continue.

She nods, adrenaline curling like a tiny star in her chest. “Okay. Let me try to phrase this right.” 

She searches for the thread, the line to follow that will connect, but it’s never very hard with Komaeda, certainly never as hard as her friends sometimes seem to think it is. “You want to further hope in this world, right?” 

And their eyes snap to her face, attentive, bright. 

“You want to be the best at doing that you can possibly be. And I think...both of us could agree that right now you aren’t there yet.” She searches their face for agreement, finds it in a tension in the lines of their mouth, an angry tugging guilt. It’s not that they’re angry that she’s pointed it out, she knows, or they would be speaking her to pieces right now. The anger, the guilt, they’re self-directed, and that’s still firmly in the realm of logic to her, even if she doesn’t find it fair.

She takes a deep breath. “So why are you shutting yourself off from that possibility?”

Komaeda blinks up at her, but she doesn’t read offense in their expression, just curiosity, so she pushes forward. “It doesn’t seem like it would hurt anyone for you to allow yourself room to grow. And in the end, it’s just you getting closer to what you want to achieve, right? If you can become a better person, then you can spread hope more effectively!” She pauses. “I...think.”

For a moment, a terrifying moment, a long silence yawns between them, Komaeda still and thoughtful, Nanami bouncing on her toes with apprehension, and then Komaeda nods, brief but decisive, and Nanami’s whole self floods with relief.

“All right, Nanami-san,” they say. “Then I have a question for you.”

“Okay,” she says, smiles, still bouncing but with excitement this time. “What is it?”

“How precisely are you proposing I ought to…” They pause, savor the word in their mouth a moment before they speak it. “ _Grow_.”

She stops still, eyes them. “Do you genuinely want my opinion, or are you just going to make fun of what I have to say?”

Komaeda’s mouth is a line she can’t read, can only follow. “No. I want to know what you think.”

And she believes them. They wouldn’t be so straightforward if they weren’t telling the truth. “Okay. Well, I think I would start with, um.” She hesitates. “What I mentioned before, accepting that you’re a person. And that...a person is never inherently perfect, or ruined, no matter what things they have or haven’t done.”

Their eyes are narrowed, though not in anger, she doesn’t think. “Then let’s say you’re right, and I’m like anyone else, in that it would be impossible for me to be either perfect or ruined.” Their mouth curls around the words, distasteful of phrasing not their own. “But what would that matter, Nanami-san?”

Oh, dear. She blinks, rewinding and rewinding again.

“If I had the chance to create hope, and I failed, so _catastrophically_ , what is to say that it would be worthwhile for me to try again?”

There is a tone to their words, bitter, hollow, that makes Nanami’s throat feel oddly closed up. 

She wonders if they feel better or worse now than they did before.

But now is not the time to ask, and she’s not sure she knows how to address the precise feeling they’re struggling with, not yet. She breathes deep, bounces up on her toes and then down flat again. “Well... probably the fact that you’re thinking about your actions at all. You’re not going to do something you think is wrong, not after what happened before. You’re paying closer attention than that. So, I think it’s kind of reasonable to trust yourself on this, now that you’ve failed, strange as that sounds.” She pauses, twists her hands together, searches out the response in the lines of their face and body. “Does that make sense, Komaeda-kun?”

“I’m aware of what you’re trying to communicate, Nanami-san.” They rise to their feet, cane swaying under their hands. “It was good to speak with you. Sleep well, won’t you?”

They give her a pat on the shoulder, and slip past her, and she hears the door shut behind them before she has time to react.

* * *

The next time they eat together, Komaeda says, pleasant, thoughtful, “This is excellent,” and nothing more.

**Author's Note:**

> my komaeda has multiple sclerosis and uses a cane (and sometimes wheelchair) for balance and pain management. feel free to ask more about this, here or [on my blog](http://ymirjotunn.tumblr.com/); i will joyfully talk about it for millennia.
> 
> many thanks to my wife [@bitternanami](http://bitternanami.tumblr.com/) for the illustration! find the full-size image [here](https://78.media.tumblr.com/e06ef69644e44dafd8db699d4ce85040/tumblr_p9gxa8HZrf1rb5jn4o1_1280.png)


End file.
